


Proper Procedures

by manic_intent



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Joan is a sober companion not a counsellor, M/M, Slash, That fic where Tommy and Sherlock are in an established relationship, and she thinks that the both of them really should get over themselves, for a given definition of 'established' and 'relationship' anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:54:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan's first clue that 'Captain Gregson' and her frustrating new charge have more than a merely professional relationship comes when he does a double take the moment Holmes drily introduces her as his 'valet'. [Prompt: Established relationship]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proper Procedures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LightDarkPheonix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightDarkPheonix/gifts).



> A/N: Prompt: What would different eps be like if Holmes was in an established relationship with Gregson? -- I actually have a really short term memory, even though I've watched most of the early eps twice (because the earlier eps of the show are broadcasting on Australian telly on Sunday after Master Chef)… so… uh… this will kinda be more of an impressions sort of thing than step by step.

I.

Joan's first clue that 'Captain Gregson' and her frustrating new charge have more than a merely professional relationship comes when he does a double take the moment Holmes drily introduces her as his 'valet'. Gregson frowns, almost imperceptibly, and looks her over again, slow and steady, then his stare snaps back to Holmes in a pointed, silent question.

Holmes, embarrassingly enough, has already breezed past into the crime scene, leaving her standing somewhat awkwardly beside Gregson. Joan tries a tentative smile, which goes unappreciated.

"His 'valet', huh?" Gregson drawls, and there's an edge there, carefully clothed. She fixes the smile on her face - handling the suspicion of family members and friends is nothing new to her in her job - and eventually he snorts and ambles into the house. 

The murder's horrific, brilliant as Holmes' deductions leading to the hidden panic room are, and Joan has to stand for a moment in the adjoining corridor to catch her breath and her thoughts. Cadavers in medical school are nothing compared to a corpse, freshly cleaved from the land of the living, and she supposes it's really the horror of death that had made her successful as a surgeon… up until the accident. 

She takes in a deep breath, and another, which is why, eyes closed, senses thrumming, she overhears the argument. It's faint, leading from the study beside her, the door closed. 

"… you're sure that you don't want to explain?" Gregson sounds calm, but Joan can tell that he's growing pissed.

"It's a temporary arrangement, made, as I already mentioned, by my father," Holmes' response is clipped. "Shouldn't we return to the crime scene, _Captain_?"

"She's living in your _house_."

There's a pause, during which Joan realizes that she's been holding her breath, and breathes out, feeling guilty about eavesdropping. She's debating between slinking off somewhere else and clearing her throat when Holmes responds, quietly, "You know me. Jealousy is illogical."

"Fuck _you_ ," Gregson snaps then, his measured patience breaking, accent thickening, something like a brogue slipping into his voice. "D'you think that's what I care about? I want t'know what you're mixed in with now, that your father has to saddle you with a live-in _doctor_ -"

Joan blinks. She's fairly sure that Holmes didn't introduce her as a doctor. Before she can think back again, Holmes is talking, sounding pleased. "Oh, you could tell? I must say, this is indicative of a remarkable deductive improvement on your part. Was it her hands?"

"Stop trying to change the subject," Gregson shoots back evenly. "Answer the goddamned _question_."

This time, the pause runs longer. "My father has occasional bursts of paternal conscience," Holmes' voice is icy now. "That is all, _Captain_."

The Captain's not cowed in the least, which tells Joan all she needs to know about who he is to her new client. "You didn't… you told me that you've stopped using."

"And I have. My father, however, thinks that I need to be observed, and so has dispatched Miss Watson as a spy. Happy?" 

"You could'a told me that from the start," Gregson retorts gruffly, though he sounds a touch conciliatory. "So she's a, what d'you call it, a sober companion?"

"Yes. Are we done?"

"Should'a told me," Gregson repeats, if wryly now, and the shuffle of footsteps tells Joan to make belated strides towards the kitchen, ostensibly to observe the forensics photographers taking shots of the glass.

Holmes materializes at her elbow, his eyes darting at the glass, then at her, then behind over her shoulder, towards where Gregson has wandered back up towards the bedroom, then he drawls, "Enlightening?"

"Excuse me?"

Holmes doesn't bother to answer, and he's already striding away, further into the kitchen, to inspect the shards. Joan breathes out. This, she can tell, isn't going to be her usual sort of client.

1.0.

Tommy thinks that it's a credit to his decades in the police force plus all the crazy shit that Sherlock occasionally puts him through that when he comes home to Sherlock cross-legged on his couch, dissecting one of Annie's old bears with a scissors, he merely drawls, "You're paying to get that fixed."

"Fascinating things, children's toys," Sherlock continues cutting up the ragged old thing. "A repository for bodily fluids, germs and old fecal matter."

"It's been washed." Tommy shrugs off his coat and makes a bee-line for the coffee machine. "And you're lucky that she's got the next three days with her mum. I'm not kidding about you having to get that fixed."

"Watson is a deft hand at stitching." Sherlock leaves the disemboweled bear and the scissors on the coffee table and unfolds gangly limbs from the couch. There's no real grace to the way Sherlock moves, as though everything is conscious, Slot A to Point B, stiff and painstakingly efficient. 

There's nothing stiff to the way he runs his fingers up Tommy's sleeve, though, and Tommy has to admit, some part of him is never gonna like it that way. Sex is a strange creature where Sherlock is concerned: unsentimental, a practiced act - and if Tommy lets him, Sherlock would probably go through the motions on autopilot. 

"You weren't happy at the cemetery."

"Sure." Tommy swallows a sigh. "You're living in New York, Sherlock. It's not by any means a stretch of the impossible to get a licensed hand gun."

"You know my feelings about firearms."

Tommy breathes in, out, keeps calm. "How about this, then. Next time you think you have a suspect in your sights? _Call me_."

"By the time you-"

"Or at least, leave a fucking _message_ ," Tommy interrupts flatly. "What if Watson hadn't thought to come and talk to me, huh? What if your kidnapper hadn't tried t'be clever and send out that fake SMS?"

"I know the logical risks to all of my endeavours, Captain."

"Yeah? Maybe you should think about the _consequences_ a little more, then," Tommy growls. It's allowed. He's frustrated and pissed off and tired, and he's come home late from the nightmare that is what his squad calls the Post-Holmes-Paperwork to Sherlock cutting up his kid daughter's teddy bear and- Sherlock strokes his hand up to Tommy's shoulder, but Tommy jerks back. "Not in the mood, _Holmes_."

"Well, I am," Sherlock has the balls to reply. "I've just come out of a life and death situation after all."

"Which didn't have t'happen in the first place!" 

"I must say, lovers' spats are highly tedious affairs." 

All of a sudden, Tommy just feels tired. He rubs his hand over his face, groans, and turns back to the coffee machine. "Then it's lucky for you that we ain't all that, hm? You've made it clear enough. You don't give a damn what I think about your 'endeavours' and you only ever come over when you want something from me."

There's silence from Sherlock, as Tommy manages to bully the coffee machine into submission, and he makes a strong black coffee in studied peace, holding on to his temper. When he turns around, coffee in hand, Sherlock's still standing exactly where he was, blinking slowly, his body quiet and frozen as his mind calculates and recalculates trajectories. Crime, Tommy thinks wryly, might be an intellectual exercise of logic to Sherlock, but relationships and the intricacies of human emotion have always needed work.

"I apologize if I have given you any cause for concern today," Sherlock says finally, managing the right words, but without any real sincerity. "I was perhaps a touch over-confident."

"By your thoughts that woman would've murdered what, at least four people in cold blood? You didn't think that she would'a tried for one more?"

"I may be prone to the occasional miscalculation where the fairer sex is concerned." Tommy waits, sipping his coffee, eyebrow arched, and eventually, even more stiffly, Sherlock adds, "Should I have any further such hypotheses to test in the future, I will notify either yourself, Watson or Detective Bell."

"Good." Tommy's a little surprised. It wouldn't be obvious to most, but Sherlock's actually starting to mellow a fraction. Maybe whatever weird form of therapy Watson's forcing him to attend has actually been helpful. Though, thinking of Watson… "Where _is_ Miss Watson?"

"I told her where I was going," Sherlock shrugs, "She seemed violently disinterested in my detailed description of the usual progress of our encounters." 

"Confident that you were going to get lucky?"

"I always have," Sherlock notes blandly, and just as Tommy scowls, wondering whether to throw the man out, he adds, a touch more hesitantly, "And I do care about what you think. You are, I should say, perhaps the only person left in my life whose opinion in a non-professional capacity I still have cause to value."

"Well," Tommy sets down his cup, briefly at a loss, blinking. "Um. Good. Good to hear." What should he say? 'Thanks'? Tommy swallows, and blinks again. He's too old and too much of a cop to blush, thankfully. 

"You're embarrassed," Sherlock doesn't miss a beat anyway. "You shouldn't be." The fingers are back on his sleeve, and this time Tommy curls an arm around Sherlock's waist, pulls him close, kisses him until the practiced ease in Sherlock's movements goes stiff and jerky.

They don't quite make it to the bedroom. Sherlock squirms and growls and whines as Tommy pins him on the banged up old love seat, stroking slicked fingers into his skinny ass; cleaned up and already wet - Sherlock always comes by prepared, but Tommy likes to take his time. He works his fingers in and out of the clenching glove of muscle until Sherlock goes limp against the cracked leather, lips parted and wet, hands clawed tight against the arm rests. 

The moment Sherlock's eyes start to unfocus, Tommy pinches him hard over his hip, and Sherlock blinks, glares at him, then ends up whimpering as Tommy jerks his fingers in deep, crooking them until Sherlock hisses and arches his back. "Greg-Gregson-"

" _Tommy_ ," Tommy corrects, although it's futile, despite the months that they've both been mincing around each other, and runs his tongue up from Sherlock's tailbone over the knobs of his arched spine, to the nape of his neck. He takes his time over it all, pointedly unhurried, nipping sharply whenever he feels Sherlock start to relax, until he can see that Sherlock's a mess, his mind overloaded from sensation, wide-eyed, gasping. It's only then that he starts to roll the condom onto his dick, tempting as it is to just go to town, but he's not as young as he used to be, and patience is often as much a necessity as a virtue. 

Sherlock still tenses up and hisses whenever Tommy pushes deep, and they're both too damn old to be doing this in the living room but fuck his back, Sherlock's fucking _amazing_ like this, sweating and bucking and letting out these incredible, pitchy gasps, as though the insane machine of his mind is starting to grind to a halt. God help him; it always makes Tommy's blood _burn_. 

"How d'you want it?" he asks, and Sherlock freezes instantly, shooting an affronted look over the curve of his shoulder, his shirt rumpled and sticking to his back. Tommy grins, showing all his teeth: he knows Sherlock doesn't want it like this, doesn't want the choice. All he comes to Tommy for, fucked up as it is at the best of times, is for the release - Sherlock just wants to let go. Wants the world blocked out of that crazy head of his, if just for a moment. But Tommy's had enough of indulging Sherlock for today, and he hopes that the message gets across.

Finally, Sherlock groans and turns away, pressing his forehead against the couch as he grinds back, rolling his hips, jerky and awkward as though he's forgotten how to act it out, and he whimpers when Tommy nips him on his neck for his trouble. "Please," Sherlock begs then, " _Please_."

Tommy briefly considers insisting that Sherlock answer the question, but Sherlock's still talking, as it turns out: he swallows, pitches his voice low, arches his back again. "Bruise me. Please." 

He really, really shouldn't be getting off on _that_ , but it takes all his willpower plus forcibly thinking over all the paperwork he's left on his desk just to drag himself back off the brink, and when he lets out a slow breath he can see Sherlock press the ghost of a smirk against the abused armchair. Just for that, he fucks Sherlock harder than usual, a hand clenched over one slender shoulder, grunting as he shoves Sherlock up over cracked leather with each thrust until the springs are creaking dangerously and the chair's probably dug a new groove over his floorboards. 

When Sherlock comes it's always with a frightening intensity, like someone's punched the life and breath out of him; he goes slack and wide-eyed and his mouth opens in a scream that's always soundless. Tommy tries not to look each time but always fails, fails and thinks how fucked up this all is even as he blindly shoves deep and comes until he's drained and bruised and on the verge of passing out. But because he's responsible, he drags himself off to dispose of the condom and clean them both up and manhandle Sherlock into the bed. 

Sherlock's even worse in bed than he is out of it, elbows everywhere and even more obnoxious with his self-entitlement issues, but he's quiet and stiff today, and after a while of it, Tommy notes, dryly, "You're forgiven, asshole."

Sherlock relaxes, but he's still staring up at the ceiling as if it holds the answers to the universe. "Duly noted." 

"You didn't tell Watson that I knew that she was your sober companion."

"It didn't seem necessary."

"She's been living with you for… how long now?"

"She's one of my father's minions, and an especially intrusive one," Sherlock mutters, though there's no real irritation there, even when he turns to glance at Tommy. "And I see no real need to overshare." There's pressure when he reaches over to touch Tommy's wrist, and if Tommy didn't know Sherlock better, he would have seen it as possessiveness.

"If you say so," Tommy replies mildly, because he _does_ know Sherlock, knows his seemingly random cues and hints, and reaches over to drag him close, ignoring the muffled squeak of indignation, to kiss him until he's pliant.

II.

The breakup's as suspiciously bloodless as it's inevitable, and although Joan doesn't actually see it happen, she knows. If anything, Sherlock has a new black eye that he's pointedly refusing to acknowledge, and he's spent the entire night neck deep researching some new compound that can supposedly convert blood to water.

There aren't any calls from the NYPD after that, and Sherlock doesn't make any more night-time trips. It's painfully peaceful at home, and Sherlock even stops trying to worm out of the group meetings. Eventually, because Joan's growing worried, and because emotional upheaval is usually one of the main reasons for a relapse, she sits down next to him as he's organising his notes.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"You'll have to be more specific, Watson," Sherlock retorts instantly, his eyes never straying from his crabbed handwriting. "Talk about what? The weather? Your brother's brief battle with pneumonia? Your last date's inability to pick out an authentic Thai restaurant?"

Joan swallows her instinctive questions. This is about Sherlock, not her. "How're you feeling?"

"A little irritated by inane questions, if you must know."

"How long have you been seeing-" 

"Still inane."

"As your sober companion-"

"I am not," Sherlock glowers briefly at her, "About to fling myself back onto the needle, Watson. As I've said before, that was a brief and regrettable lapse in my self-control that I've since taken steps to repair." 

"All right, fine," Joan decides it's best to pick her battles. "But if you want to talk to me about anything, let me know." 

She starts to get back up from the table, and just as she's pushed her chair back, Sherlock mutters, "It wasn't the way you think it was, anyway. It was just an arrangement." 

Joan sits back down. "An arrangement?"

"I get sex, he gets sex. It's hardly a _novel_ form of social contract. In the Captain's case, it had the added bonus of an NYPD connection _and_ a lack of messy sentiment."

Joan stares at Sherlock, trying to keep her face blank. "Right, and that's why you've been moping in the house for a week." 

"I've been fully occupied for a week." 

"And that's why you were so twitchy and distracted during that case when you thought that the Captain might have planted evidence."

This earns her another glare. "My regard for his professional integrity is separate from our personal arrangements. And, I should add, this selfsame regard has remained unshaken."

Whatever talk Gregson had with Sherlock after _that_ case, Sherlock hadn't come home until late into Saturday morning, blithely unrepentant and seemingly oblivious to the reddened marks on his neck. The Mornings After, as Joan had started to call Sherlock's 'visits' in her head, seemed to have an almost narcotic effect on Sherlock's otherwise neurotic moods. It would have been worrying, if she hadn't met and made her own measure of Captain Tommy Gregson.

"Maybe you should talk to him again." 

Sherlock frowns. "And that would achieve what exactly? A matching bruise?"

Joan sighs. "He shouldn't have hit you." 

The stare, this time, is blank, assessing. "I would have thought," Sherlock added finally, "That you would have said that I deserved it."

"I was a doctor," Joan begins, stops when the stare doesn't change, and shrugs. "I understand being angry at you. I mean, _I_ was mad at you. But to hit you that hard? From a policeman? You shouldn't have done what you did, it wasn't remotely acceptable by any means. But answering violence with violence isn't acceptable, either."

Sherlock sits and thinks this over for a while, his notes forgotten on the table, then he shoots her that blank look again, as though he's searching her face for more data, and Joan throws up her hands. "All right. If you're not going to talk to him, then I am."

"Feel free," Sherlock mutters, turning back to his notes, but when she takes out her phone, he adds, "I'm suspended from consulting. I'll prefer not to be expelled altogether."

She rolls her eyes and sends a text. After a few minutes, Gregson answers, and Sherlock tries a little too hard to seem disinterested. When she tucks her phone away and gets up, he opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and closes it again, then glares at the paper. "You're going to meet him after work for a drink."

"Unless you want to go instead," Joan suggests, but Sherlock doesn't say anything until she starts to go up the stairs.

"He won't be there," Sherlock predicts, but he doesn't seem to be talking to her, so she keeps on climbing.

Just before she leaves to go, after dinner, there's a knock on the door, and Joan answers it absently before standing frozen in the doorway. "Captain?"

"I thought," Gregson says mildly, looking a little sheepish, "That we could skip the drinks and save a bit of time. Is he home?"

Joan recalls that Sherlock once told her that his admiration of Gregson came not only from his ingrained sense of integrity but his 'above average intelligence, for a policeman', and smiles. "Seems a shame not to go out when I'm already dressed. I'll be back in a few hours." 

Gregson nods at her, already distracted, and she lets herself out.

2.0.

It's a bad business when _the_ woman returns, and all right, goddamned _painful_ as it is to see Sherlock so broken up and lost, Tommy steps back anyway. He visits Sherlock once, in the hospital, but Sherlock doesn't even seem to see him, and on his way out, Watson trots up to them and touches his elbow.

They end up in one of the unused private consult rooms, which stinks of disinfectant. Tommy hates hospitals. It's a cop thing. "Something up?"

Watson gives him a Look. "Are you all right?"

"Sure." 

"About Irene-"

"What about her?" 

"Well," Watson takes in a slow breath, and folds her arms over her chest, "You and Sherlock-"

"There was no 'me and Sherlock'," Tommy tells her patiently. "We had an arrangement. Irene's…" 

Tommy hesitates. He doesn't know how to put it into words. He's met Sherlock before, pre-Irene, as he thinks of it, in London, and eccentric and fucked up as he was then, there was nothing like what he was afterwards in New York, post-Irene. For Sherlock, there's really only a pre- and post-Irene state of being. Tommy has never meant anything even remotely near that to Sherlock. In a way, he's glad. He's never meant anything like this to his ex, either. He's not sure whether he'll ever want to mean this much to someone, to the point that his existence defines theirs. It's a frightening thought.

Watson's starting to look sympathetic, which is worse, and Tommy exhales irritably. "Just leave it, Watson."

There's a shitload of work to do, thank God, especially with Sherlock so out of commission, and Tommy lets Marcus handle the Irene matter, concentrating on other cases. Marcus knows about him and… about _Sherlock_ , anyway, and Tommy's pretty sure that their 'arrangement' is an open secret in the House, but nobody talks about it. He sees Watson now and then, ambling around talking to Marcus, but tries to put it out of his mind. 

His apartment, empty before, seems emptier now, and Tommy works longer hours on the off days, spends more time with Annie on the visitation days. He's far too old for angst and pining, and far too hardened from decades of being a cop. Shit happens. Life moves on. 

And then he gets shot right outside his office.

Tommy remembers little about it, even after. He remembers being punched back against the door of his office with an unseen force, remembers the sound of the shots, the shouts, Marcus jumping on the- on Detective _McKenzie_ , of all people, remembers McKenzie screaming something about 'for Jennie, for Jennie' before he's mobbed. 

He wakes up in hospital, drugged up and pissed off, because the paperwork in his office has probably reached critical mass by now, and dimly manages to focus on Watson, reading through his medical chart. 

"You've been in an induced coma for a week," she begins by telling him briskly, as she puts it back, "They didn't have to remove the bullets. Missed your heart by inches." 

He stares at her, blinking, feeling sluggish, and Watson explains. Seriously. Tommy gets shot and gets put into a coma for a week, and the world goes to hell. It seems that Irene Adler is really the mysterious Moriarty, that Sherlock has also been shot - but not seriously - and Watson herself was briefly kidnapped but otherwise unhurt. McKenzie was blackmailed into attempted murder: it was either Tommy or his little daughter Jennie. As to Moriarty-

"Wait," Tommy rasps. "How's McKenzie going?"

Watson arches an eyebrow, as if surprised that Tommy would still put his officers first, fuck two bullets in the chest, and says, quietly, "They found Jennie's body. It wasn't… it was, there was a lot of damage. McKenzie managed to hang himself in jail." 

Tommy closes his eyes, exhaling, as he clenches his hands. He's met Jennie before, when McKenzie brought the little girl into the House. Cop kids love visiting the precinct - Annie still does, and she's twice Jennie's age. God. "Did you - Have we caught that bitch?"

"Not yet," Watson pulls up a chair, folds her hands over her knees. "Sherlock did visit you."

Tommy blinks at her, playing dumb, but he admits that he's a little surprised. Maybe. Or maybe he's not. It's amply clear that Sherlock understands sentiment, after all. It's the reason why he's been a fucking mess over the entire matter of Adler-Moriarty. "Good to know."

Watson lowers her voice. "McKenzie only missed because Detective Bell reacted instantly the moment he saw him draw his gun. Knocked it off centre. But still. They nearly lost you in surgery." 

"Yeah." Tommy got that much before he had passed out from the shock and pain, and as to the bit about what had happened in surgery, he could guess. "You're lucky she didn't do anything to you when she kidnapped you. If Marcus hasn't already done it, get him to put a security detail on you."

"I'm not the one whom she saw as a threat," Watson says wryly, and reaches over to pat his wrist. "We'll get her." 

Tommy hates enforced rest, and as much as Marcus supplies him with running updates, Watson's words rattle around in his head and unsettle him. Sherlock doesn't visit further, but Annie and his ex come by almost daily. Sarah always smiles, wan and pale, and if he wasn't as high as a kite on the medication they probably would've had Words. She looks at him as though she had been _right_ about leaving him. 

Maybe she was. The thought sticks, and he's in a gloomy mood when he's finally discharged, not really looking forward to going home, but forbidden from heading back to the office for another week. At least Moriarty's been trapped due to a clever little scheme by Watson, and Marcus assures him that everything's running smoothly, but Tommy feels restless and out of the loop. 

He _is_ surprised to find Sherlock in his apartment, a box of yellowing files on the coffee table and paper everywhere, and even as he blinks at Sherlock from where he is at the door, Sherlock only glances briefly at him. "I'm reviewing cold cases from New Scotland Yard," he explains brusquely, "The head of the snake might be gone, but the rest of the snake remains."

"Okay," Tommy blinks some more, and adds, "Here?"

"I thought that you might have some input," Sherlock states, which is a bald faced lie if Tommy has ever seen one. Sherlock never invites anyone - except maybe Watson of late - for input. 

"Let me guess," Tommy drawls, and manages to settle into the armchair, still numb from painkillers. "Watson talked you into coming over?"

"Actually, no. I talked myself into it," Sherlock admits, and that's a bit of a surprise. "I haven't-" Sherlock continues, pauses, looks away, then stiffens up, ramrod straight, "I have been neglecting those who are… important to me." 

"You had a pretty fucking good reason," Tommy notes dryly.

"Still-"

"And even you wouldn't have picked McKenzie out. The man's a fixture at the House. He's been in Homicide almost as long as I have." 

"Still," Sherlock repeats, and this time he's staring at his hands, hard. "But for the quick intervention of Detective Bell, you would be dead."

"Yeah." Tommy still hasn't really processed that thought, even now. It's probably going to need a lot of good beer. "You're lucky that she didn't also decide to have Watson shot."

"'Lucky'? No. It wasn't luck." Sherlock places the files on the couch and gets up, his injured leg stiff as he ambles over, and he waits until Tommy reaches up for him before he settles awkwardly over Tommy's lap, gangly limps everywhere but warm, so blessedly warm and alive, his eyes wide and unblinking. All that crazy steel-bright attention's focused on Tommy now, as long fingers curl over his cheek with surprising gentleness. "She was only curious about Watson. You, on the other hand - she wanted you dead."

"Old cops are hard to kill," Tommy notes dryly, and tries not to freeze up in surprise when Sherlock leans in for an awkward peck on the lips. Sherlock never initiates kisses. Sex, sure, but any other sort of intimacy seems to puzzle him, as though he has to consciously consider whether it's immediately relevant.

"I think," Sherlock says them, and his face is frozen up, as though his brain's still trying to process an appropriate expression, "I think that I would have greatly regretted it if you had not survived."

People who didn't know Sherlock would have thought that a cold thing to say, but Tommy knows Sherlock, and it occurs to him belatedly that perhaps he knows Sherlock better than anyone else, after all, even Watson. Even Moriarty. He realizes, as Sherlock stares at him searchingly, as though he's trying to commit every inch of Tommy's face to memory, that he's missed this detail all along. There's a pre-Tommy Sherlock after all, and God willing, there won't be a post-Tommy one anytime soon.

"Can't get rid of me that easily," Tommy keeps his voice even, as he tips Sherlock down for a deeper, slower kiss. Injuries don't make it easy for thank-God-you're-alive sex, even when they make it somehow to the bedroom, but they give it a hell of a shot. 

"You've probably aggravated your injury," Watson tells him in the morning, having shown up with breakfast, and seems occupied in cleaning up the papery mess that Sherlock's left in Tommy's tiny living room. 

"Worth it," Tommy shrugs, nursing his coffee, pleasantly fuzzy from drugs and caffeine, and eventually Sherlock stumbles out of the bedroom, thankfully mostly dressed, yawning, and rumpled. Tommy's dick makes a manful twitch at the sight, despite drugs, age and injuries, and he belatedly shuffles further against the kitchen counter, swallowing a mouthful of coffee. 

"Ah, Watson," Sherlock eyes the room, "I draw your attention to the Red Circle case files." 

"Got it," Watson starts sifting through the box, and when her back's turned, Sherlock leans over, and the kiss is more measured this time, a hard and insistent press of lips, as though Sherlock's trying to leave imprints on his skin. It's an arousing thought, fuck proper bed rest and catching up on work; and it probably shows - Sherlock has a little smirk on his mouth and his hand's splayed dangerously low over Tommy's belly, going lower-

"Careful about his stitches," Watson says dryly, from the door, and Tommy jerks, nearly spilling his coffee over himself. Sherlock rolls his eyes, and she's gone, files and all. Tommy sighs, about to say something about a doctor's opinion, but then Sherlock now has his hand flat over his crotch and _well_. The rest of the morning can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> oh man, I love Gregson. go away, ficbunny


End file.
